The subject matter disclosed herein relates to a thrust reverser or other bypass duct structure for a turbofan aircraft engine, and, more particularly, to a latch beam deflection support.
Modern aircraft, such as commercial jets, include a fuselage that is formed to define a cabin and a cockpit. The fuselage has a nose cone section and a tail section, wings extending outwardly from the fuselage and a tail at the tail section of the fuselage. Thrust for the aircraft is generated by engines that are positioned within engine nacelles and typically either attach to the undersides of the wings, or the sides of the fuselage near the rear of the plane, or are built into the tail. The engines include an air inlet, a compressor to compress inlet air, a combustor in which fuel is mixed with compressed inlet air and combusted to produce a working fluid and a turbine in which the working fluid is expanded. The engines further include an outlet through which the working fluid is exhausted to generate the thrust.
The engine nacelles may include an inner fixed structure (IFS), which generally surrounds and provides an aerodynamic fairing for a portion of the engine and certain auxiliary devices including ducts that carry fluids to and from the engine sections and auxiliary devices and to the airplane. The engine nacelles further include several structures disposed radially outwardly of the IFS, some of which help define, along with the inner fixed structure, a fan duct for fan bypass air in a turbofan engine. During operations of each of the engines, air generally moves through each of the engines in a core flow stream and a fan flow stream. The core flow stream moves through a core of the engine inside the IFS and the fan flow stream moves through the fan duct.
While bifurcations in the fan duct serve many purposes, including providing a path for systems routing and structural stability of the engine nacelles, their presence may cause or generate drag. As such, there have been proposals for removing a lower bifurcation to reduce drag in the fan flow stream. But, in-service deflections at the aft end of the latch beam (i.e., at a point furthest from the torque box) must be managed in a different fashion absent the lower bifurcation which, when present, lends structural support.